Surgical instruments of the above-described type are used in particular in surgery. They are coupled to handpieces that include drives in order to set the drive shaft in rotation. A problem with such instruments is the mounting of the drive shaft. This lies, on the one hand, in an increasing miniaturisation of the systems that leads to a reduction of an outside diameter of the shanks of the instruments. It is known to use radial bearings in the form of ball bearings for mounting the shanks. However, these cannot be configured as small as desired. On the other hand, it must be considered that such instruments are operated at very high rotational speeds of up to 100,000 revolutions per minute. Problems related to wear and increased rise in temperature are associated with this.
Therefore, it would be desirable to provide a surgical instrument, a surgical handpiece and also a surgical drive system of the above-described type which allow a reliable operation even with increasing miniaturisation of the shanks.